The Real Grizzlies

By Jane Wettach

In her confirmation hearings, Betsy DeVos, nominee to be Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, was asked if guns have a place in public schools. Her response was that there is a school in Wapati, Wyoming that probably needs a gun to protect it from grizzlies. Ms. DeVos’s quip about grizzlies was just one of many answers that reflected her utter lack of understanding of the real problems that keep our system of public education from being all it could and should be.

Instead of addressing the issues, Ms. DeVos continually promoted the narrative that our public schools are failing and the appropriate response is to allow parents to remove their children and send them to private schools at taxpayer expense. To the extent our public schools are “failing,” which is a debatable proposition in any event, it is because we have not defended many of our schools from the real grizzlies that menace them: economic and racial segregation and chronic underfunding.

Increasingly, poor children go to school with poor children and wealthy children go to school with wealthy children in America.

Due to our tolerance for rigid school district boundaries and school financing schemes that allow wealthier communities to concentrate their school funds on themselves, this economic segregation also results in vastly fewer resources available for poor children. Ruling on the economic segregation in Connecticut schools this past September, Judge Thomas Moukawsher commented that the current system “has left rich school districts to flourish and poor school districts to flounder.”

These concentrations of poverty rob poor children of virtually any chance for a better life. But a reversal of this trend, creating systems that foster economic integration instead of segregation, could have dramatic results. Research shows that poor children who attend school with wealthier classmates perform an average of two grade levels ahead of poor children who attend school with other poor children. Poor children in those economically mixed classrooms are 68 percent more likely to go to college, according to a Century Foundation study. This benefits us all.

Racial segregation is similarly on the rise in our public schools. About 80 percent of black and Latino children in the U.S. attend segregated schools. Likewise, the average white student attends a school that is 90 percent white. Since the year 2000, the number of highly segregated schools in our country has doubled.

Like poor schools, schools with high percentages of African American and Hispanic students have strikingly fewer resources than schools with high percentages of white students.

These schools are far less likely to offer a full range of courses in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math), advanced placement courses, and classes for gifted students. Without concentrated and sustained efforts, spearheaded at the federal level, segregation will continue to grow. This deprives all children of the opportunity to learn with and about people of other cultures, races, and backgrounds. Cross-racial and cross-cultural friendships formed in school expand into our communities and workplaces, creating a more unified, compassionate society and one better able to compete in the global economy.

Highly proficient teachers, small classes, adequate books, computers, and equipment, additional services for at-risk children, and buildings in good repair are all part of what is needed for a supportive school system that will allow children to thrive. All of that costs money. If we want good teachers, we have to pay them good salaries. But in many, many school districts around the country, schools are chronically underfunded and are unable to hire and purchase what is needed. While funding for schools is 90 percent at the state and local level, leadership from the U.S. Department of Education is needed to persuade the country as a whole to make a greater political commitment to adequately supporting public schools.

Ms. DeVos’s testimony at her confirmation hearing revealed that she has virtually no understanding of or concern about these issues. With her limited knowledge of how public schools are governed, funded, and operated, Ms. DeVos is uniquely unqualified to be our next Secretary of Education. The Senate should demand a candidate who understands something about the real threats to public education and expresses a commitment to protecting schools and children against them.

Jane Wettach teaches Education Law at Duke Law School.